Highlights of my reading in Idaho Falls

Future Men (Canon Press, 2001) by Douglas Wilson (library # 248.845 WIL) “Christians are a race of dragon-fighters. Our sons are born to this. Someone ought to tell them” (107).

Loved by God (W Publishing Group, 2001) by R.C. Sproul (library #231 SPR). As our church family has been studying I Corinthians 13 on Sunday mornings, this book concludes with its last three chapters discussing this biblical text.

Magazine – Christian Century (February 8, 2012) – Robert Millet is quoted – “It has become important for traditional Christians to maintain an unbridgeable creature-Creator chasm. For Latter-day Saints, God and man are the same species. God has substance — he is not just a force or power. He is an exalted, glorified man, and one of the purposes of the Gospels is to help us become what he is.” “We believe that Jesus and all humanity had a life before this life and in that world, Christ was the eldest — Jesus was our elder brother.” The magazine author, Daniel Burke, then writes, “Thus, Jesus is a step below God on the stairway to heaven — and not an equal member of the Trinity” (p. 16).

Magazine – Christianity Today (February 2012) – Russell D. Moore – “For too long, we’ve called unbelievers to ‘invite Jesus into your life.’ Jesus doesn’t want to be in your life. Your life’s a wreck. Jesus calls you into his life” (p. 32). “If the kingdom is what Jesus says it is, then what matters isn’t just what we neatly classify as “spiritual” things. The natural world around us isn’t just a temporary “environment,” but part of our future inheritance in Christ. Our jobs–preaching the gospel, loading docks, picking avocados, writing legislation, or herding goats–aren’t accidental. The things we do in church–passing offering plates, cuddling crack-addicted babies, or fixing the “pop” in the sound system–aren’t random. God is teaching us, as he taught our Lord, to learn in little things how to be in charge of great things (Matt. 25:14-23)” (p. 33).

The Mormon People (2012) by Matthew Bowman. “Joseph Smith’s church is the last incarnation — or, to use Mormon parlance, the last dispensation–before Christ’s Second Coming. Mormons believe that this time God has established his kingdom so firmly, and in such fertile ground, that it will not fall again.”

Magazine – Newsweek (Feb. 13, 2012) – Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes about the rise of Christophobia. “From blasphemy laws to brutal murders to bombings to mutilations and the burning of holy sites, Christians in so many nations live in fear” (p. 30).

Magazine – Biblical Archeaology Review (Jan/Feb. 2012) – “When Did Israel Begin? New Hieroglyphic Inscription may date Israel’s Ethnogenesis 200 years earlier than you thought.” It is “a gray slab 18 inches high and 15.5 inches wide.” “The third (broken) name-ring may read “Israel,” according to three German scholars.”